Bernie and Jane Sanders: The Democratic Party’s Thelma and Louise

[SunSeeker]

Leftists like Sanders regard the Democratic Party as a far bigger problem in the world than the Republican Party. The thinking goes like this: The Republicans, sure, everybody knows they’re evil. That’s obvious. But the Democrats, they’re evil too. They adopt a few attractive positions, say nice things on certain issues as long as saying those nice things doesn’t really threaten the established economic order, so they’re even worse, finally, because they fool people into thinking they’re on their side. I heard this a hundred times from the old guys who used to hector me at the Socialist Scholars Conference in Manhattan 25 years ago when I used to speak there.

That’s what Bernie is. If he’d stayed in Brooklyn, he’d have been a Socialist Scholars Conference hectorer. He had the wisdom to move to a podunk state, and the luck to do so just as it was becoming the place where all the aging hippies were moving and so he became a mayor and then a House member and, finally and exaltedly, a senator.

All that said I give him some credit. He’s much better on the big stage than I thought he’d be. And I certainly don’t have contempt for all his supporters. I am friends with some of his supporters. I love some of his supporters—not that way, but dear friends, extended family, like that. And I think most of his supporters are rational people who’ll accept the reality that he just didn’t get as many votes as the other person and in November will vote for the other person.

But they’re not what’s at issue here. What’s at issue here is the people who won’t accept reality, and in particular the Pied Piper who’s blowing on the flute and waltzing them off the pier. He is becoming a sputtering joke, a man who lost 58-42 and thought—really, truly thought, deep down in his kishkes—that it was stolen from him. And his aides, according to a New York Times piece posted Wednesday night, are ready to "harm" Clinton over the course of the next month, because Sanders also believes these farkakte general-election polls taken before anyone has spent a single dollar attacking him.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/19/bernie-and-jane-sanders-the-democratic-party-s-thelma-and-louise.html

[Cha]

1. No, the Democratic Party is NOT "evil". burnie has to sell that for his

faux "revolution".

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Emo%20Progressive

Mahalo for this, SunSeeker.. I will read more when I'm have some time.

[SunSeeker]

10. Yes. It also explains a lot of the hate for the Democratic Party you see on DU. nt

[Cha]

13. Oh yes.. BS' hate is destroying him.. it's not going to destroy us.

It's disingenuous bullshit.. He doesn't live in reality.. he has to demonize everything to rile up the venom.. Nevada should have been no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to how he leads on his followers.

[TwilightZone]

15. I laughed the first time I saw the term "Emo Progressive"

I thought it was so appropriate. It fits a couple of my friends (and 80% of DU) to a T.

[Cha]

16. Yes, it does Twilight.. That description could have

been written about them.. and either it was or there are more of them out there all over the net. eeek.

[sheshe2]

2. Holy mother!

He scares me.

[pandr32]

6. Me too!

Pied Piper certainly applies. The effect he has on his followers is alarming. They have heard the same things repeated over and over again, yet thrill at hearing them over and over again some more. It is social contagion or mass hypnosis.
Every word is flatly two dimensional to us not under the spell--glitter with no substance, and way too often--outright lies.
He will not leave now, even though he has burned his bridges. He will blow into his magic pipe and lure his interpellated followers over a cliff along with him.

[Cha]

3. Wow, Michael Tomasky.. omg

that pic just happens to be perfect, SunSeeker.. because we've been through the whole car off the cliff with Sarandon.. but, this, as we know by now.. starts @ the top.

Hey he even used a term I have used for BS.. "egging them on.. " guess it's pretty obvious.

In such a circumstance, a normal politician would say something like: I still think the process in Nevada last weekend was unfair to my delegates. However, there is no place in my movement for this kind of invective, these kinds of threats. I renounce and denounce them completely. And I tell my supporters now, refrain from that. Hillary Clinton is my opponent in this primary; she is not our enemy.

He fixed burnie's speech for him, too.. too bad BS is not that guy.

But they’re not what’s at issue here. What’s at issue here is the people who won’t accept reality, and in particular the Pied Piper who’s blowing on the flute and waltzing them off the pier. He is becoming a sputtering joke, a man who lost 58-42 and thought—really, truly thought, deep down in his kishkes—that it was stolen from him. And his aides, according to a New York Times piece posted Wednesday night, are ready to "harm" Clinton over the course of the next month, because Sanders also believes these farkakte general-election polls taken before anyone has spent a single dollar attacking him.

This is brilliant from MT, SunSeeker~Mahalo

[SunSeeker]

11. MT joins pretty much everyone else in panning Sanders irresponsible Statement in response to NV.

But MT really nails it.

[BlueMTexpat]

4. K & R, SunSeeker!

Thanks for posting!

[MarianJack]

5. Of course,...

...nobody here, in the Hillary Clinton group, is saying that Back Bench Bernie is actually smart, are we?

PEACE!

[SunSeeker]

12. So true. We don't believe in destroying the Democratic Party in order to "save" it.

As Michael Tomasky states in the opening paragraph from the article:

Now we are forced to ask whether Bernie Sanders has decided he wants to destroy the Democratic Party. I’m sure he would say he wants to save it. The way we saved villages in Vietnam. You know the quote.

[Little Star]

7. That picture on The Daily Beast is..

so funny. Wish I knew how to post it here. k&r

[SunSeeker]

8. You mean this one?

On my Samsung smartphone, I just press on the image and hit Save on the drop down menu. Then I open my Photobucket app and upload it. Then I paste the Photobucket link into my post.

The Daily Beast has had some great satire pics of Sanders. My fave is the one they did for their article about how Sanders hypocritically supports that trillion dollar MIC boondoggle, the F-35:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/09/bernie-sanders-loves-this-1-trillion-war-machine.html

[Little Star]

19. Yes, the Thelma & Louise one. Thanks!

[caquillo]

14. You just right-click on the image

Select 'Copy'. Open a new message text and select 'Paste.' The URL should show, but when you click "Post my reply!" the image should show up.

[BootinUp]

9. I am so sick of the "thinking" that ignores reality, its brainwashing plain and simple. nt

[eastwestdem]

18. It is so clear. There is no way that anyone but a brainwashed person would become so enraged

when their candidate lost months ago. Most people would slowly go through the stages of letting go, and realize that even though they didn't get their way, that it was over. Not so for some of these Sanders supports.

[eastwestdem]

17. They are certainly enjoying the ride...and damage to the party be damned...

they never really belonged anyway.

[Tarheel_Dem]

20. It's great to be finally reading these articles in spaces where people will actually see them.

I wish I could find that quote from Pres. Obama's graduation speech about conspiracy theorists feeling like when things don't go their way, "the system must be rigged".

[SunSeeker]

21. I think this is it:

And democracy requires compromise, even when you are 100 percent right. This is hard to explain sometimes. You can be completely right, and you still are going to have to engage folks who disagree with you. If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want. And if you don’t get what you want long enough, you will eventually think the whole system is rigged. And that will lead to more cynicism, and less participation, and a downward spiral of more injustice and more anger and more despair. And that's never been the source of our progress. That's how we cheat ourselves of progress.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/obamas-howard-commencement-transcript-222931#ixzz49AcA6SpH 
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[Tarheel_Dem]

22. SunSeeker, you're the best. That's exactly the quote. I'll be bookmarking it for posterity.